A Seminar Report on

WORLD FAMOUS ARCHITECTS

LE CORBUSIER
LOUIS KAHN
EERO SAARINEN
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Submitted By

LAKSHMI JAYAPRAKASH
SHAREEN MUHAMMED
SWETHA DAS

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALICUT

CALICUT - 673601

CONTENTS
Page No.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. LE CORBUSIER

2.1

Citrohan House,France

2.2

Villa Savoye,Poissy,France

2.3

Notre-Dame-Du-Haut,Ronchamp,France

2.4

Palace Of Assembly,Chandigarh,India

11

2.5

High Court,Chandigarh,India

15

3. LOUIS KAHN

18

3.1

Richard's Medical Centre, Philadelphia, Penssylvania

18

3.2

National Assembly Hall, Dacca, Bangladesh

21

3.3

Kim Bell Art Museum, Fortworth, Texas

23

4. EERO SAARINEN
4.1

4.2

27

Dulle's Airport, Chantilly,Virginia

27

4.1.1 The Project

27

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri

34

5. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

36

5.1

Introduction

36

5.2

Residential Design

37

5.2.1 William H Winslow House, Chicago

37

5.2.2 Ward W. Willits House, Highland Park, Illinois

39

5.2.3 Fredrick C. Robie House, Chicago

40

5.2.4 Falling Water, Pennsylvania

41

5.3

5.4

5.5

5.6

6.0

Religious Structures

43

5.3.1 Unity Church, Oak Park, Illinois

43

High Rise Buildings

46

5.4.1 Harold C. Price Company Tower,Bartlesville,Oklahoma

46

Civic and Cultural Centres

48

5.5.1 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,Manhattan,New York

48

Commercial Buildings

50

5.6.1 V.C. Morris Gift Shop,San Francisco

50

CONCLUSION

52

REFERENCES

53

1. INTRODUCTION
Modernist doctrine of the

early 20th century had great propagandistic success in

promoting the development and spread of the movement, proclaiming that

technological, mechanomorphic architecture was mankinds social and moral salvation
and could make men better through a purer, more rational and

functional

architectural environment. But looking back historically, it is crucial to realize that

there are many modern architectures not merely one. Modern architecture is not just
machine style architecture, but a far more complicated phenomenon. Modern
architecture is many sided and ever changing .The early 20th century, for all its
mechanology was a period of vitality. The great architects of this period were Le
Corbusier, Louis I kahn, Eero Saarinen and Frank Lloyd Wright. They exerted unique
influence on the architecture of the first half of this century.

2. LE CORBUSIER
Born in 1887, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret was a child prodigy, whose talents, ever
complicated and full of surprises, survived into vigorous old age. Like many others in
the movement, Le Corbusiers high modernist theory and practice combined classical
idealism of form, futuristic mechanomorphism, and abstract art, but to him they were
not of equal importance. The foundation of his high modernism was classical
idealism, and beneath it was an even deeper layer of architectural belief, namely in the
primacy of emotional response. As he openly stated: you employ stone, wood,
concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. This is construction.
Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy
and I say this is beautiful. That is architecture. Art enters in.
Le Corbusiers most famous dictum was a house is a machine fo r living in. for him,
the new architecture was machinelike in several ways: its machine-age materials and
methods of construction; its machinelike efficiency in serving physical and
psychological needs; and its resemblance to the actual look of machines. His
infatuation with contemporary machinery was almost as strong as his love for
classical forms. This was possible because the contemporary machines that he most
admired ships, cars, planes- tended superficially to resemble the simple geometric
forms of classicism.
For Le Corbusier, as for every High Modernist, abstract art was a key to the formal
resolution of the tension between the machine and the classical norm of beauty. His
buildings, like those of his international colleagues, displayed the floating volumes
and hovering planes of Elementarist art, and the vogue for thin, weightless skins of
masonry and glass drawn around taut massings.
Le Corbusiers classic designs,especially in his residential buildings, tended to
present, externally,

a quadratic, box like structure. This format reflected Le

Corbusiers espousal of classic form and the whitewashed, cubiform, vernacular

structures that lined the shores of his beloved Mediterranean. His house design was
also connected with post-cubist Parisian art, in which he played a role about 1920 as a

painter in a movement called Purism. Le Corbusiers purist paintings, invariably still

lifes of common household objects-bottles, glasses, carafes on a tabletop-emmetric
integrity of the objects, and they spilled over into his architectural conceptions: large
volumes; ground plans resembling his paintings of curved/angular forms within a
rectangular frame; and standing forms within a rectangular frame; and standing forms
sometimes appearing three dimensionally on rooftops, suggesting sculptural blow ups
of his canvases.

Fig 2.1 Domino house, construction system

Beginning in 1914, Le Corbusier produced several new structural formats for houses,
for which the most important was his so called Domino type. It is derived from the
ferro concrete work of Hennebique and Perret, but whereas Perrets

poiny of

departure was the post and lintel frame, which he filled in with the floor slabs, Le
Corbusier began with the floor slabs as primary, dominolike units floating on six
freestanding posts ( placed at the positions of the six dots on a domino playing piece ).
The structure was thus freed of trabeated rigidity, not only in the openness of the
interior but in the cantilever of the floor beyond the line of supports, from whose
presence the periphery of the building was liberated. Over the next decade, Le
Corbusier explored the implications of this structure and in 1926 published his ideas
as the Five points of a new architecture:

1) the elimination of the ground storywith the elevation of the house above
pilotis- free standing ferro concrete posts; given the domino format. This
amounted merely to omitting the ground floor walls.
2) A flat roof , used as a garden terrace
3) Free interior planning by means of

partition walls slotted between the

supports.
4) Free composition of the external curtain walls.
5) A preference for ribbon windows.
No part of the scheme was itself new, but

Le Corbusier saw that the whole office

program was more than the sum of its parts. What ultimately mattered most to Le
Corbusier was not structure or function, but the schemes potential for space and
volume, for attaining the High Modernist image of a masonry and glass membrane
stretched around a geometric form, literally hovering in the air on slender stilts, and,
like a Greek temple, set clearly against nature and infused with light and air from all
around.
2.1 CITROHAN HOUSE
Among the earliest projects to conform to this new architectural order was Le
Cosbusiers 1920-22 Citrohan House. The name was an intentional pun on Citreon,
the French car manufacturer, with the idea that the house was to be a mass producible
machine for living to alleviate the severe postwar housing shortage. It was
functionally impeccable: above the ground floor carport- loggia was a double height
living room lit by a large industrial window; to the rear, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom;
and two levels of terraces. The model projected an aura of salutary efficiency and
vitality.

Fig 2.2 Citrohan house

2.2 VILLA SAVOYE
Location

Poissy, France

Date

1928 to 1929

Building Type

house

Construction System

concrete and plastered unit masonry

Climate

temperate

Context

rural or suburban

Style

Modern

The villa originally looked out from a half circle of trees across a gently rolling,
idyllic landscape below it. Unlike the confined urban locations of most of Le
Corbusiers earlier houses, the openness of the Poissy site permitted a freestanding
building and the full realization of his five-point program. Essentially the house
comprised two contrasting , sharply defined , yet interpenetrating external aspects.
The dominant element is the square single storied box, a pure, sleek, geometric
envelope lifted buoyantly above slender pilotis, its taut skin slit for narrow ribbon
windows tat run unbroken from corner to corner (but nor over them, thus preserving
the integrity of the sides of the square). The secondary element is fragmented and is
composed of incomplete circular forms-the tubular windscreens of the roof solarium
and the half-oval enclosure recessed behind the pilotis within a semicircular driveway
(containing a glass walled foyer, servants quarters, and three garage spaces) but most

of all, the stunning exterior realizes fully Le Corbusiers ideal of the masterly,
correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in the light.

Fig. 2.3. Ground floor and second floor plans

Fig. 2.4. Upper storey

Fig. 2.5. Entrance

Fig. 2.6. Stair case, upper storey

Fig. 2.7 Section

Like the exterior, the rest of the villa also has formal oppositions, which create effects
ranging from somber drama to the lighthearterd play that is his signature. These
contrasts at the Villa Savoye are everywhere one looks and include structure and
space, repose and movement, interior and exterior, and the clash of details. Entering
the foyer, one is struck at once by several of these oppositions: as throughout most of
the building, the Domino grid of supports is deliberately left exposed and kept distinct
from partition and curtain walls, so that structure and volume are seen as separate
elements. The truly dramatic gesture in the foyer, however, is the juxtaposition of the
steep spiral stair-threaded through the height of the building like a corkscrew -against
the leisurely ramp that ascends in an effortless glide.
On the piano nobile, the interiors are gathered around a large, open garden court, with
the closed, secluded private quarters to the left and rear, and common areas to the
front glass, while above it the solarium, closed to the exterior, also opens towards the
center. The area is pervaded with subtle tensions, elisions, and oppositions, as where
to the rear of the garden court a closed cubic volume counterposes the adjacent cube
of space that bleeds through the ribbon windows to the landscape. The detailing
frequently involves playful compositions as a part of the villas ever changing
architectural discourse.
The villa savoye is not only a superb fusion of functionalism and dazzling formal
invention, it also alive with his torical and contemporary allusion.

Later Le Corbusier
The late career of Le Corbusier is startling. His medium still is ferroconcrete, now
used, however, not to draw thin planes around geometric volumes but to create bold
sculptural effects with rugged textures and great scale and weight. His modular
system of proportions, developed in the 1940s was so complicated and arbitrary that
few critics or architects actually understood it. Le Corbusier developed a Nietzchean
view of his calling, a ruthless will to impose his artistic authority on the world.
Nothing was sacred to him but his current phase of art.

Le Corbusiers Expressionist late style is often called brutalism after its aggressive,
roughly finished form and its characterestic material-beton brut or raw concrete.

2.3 NOTRE-DAME-DU-HAUT
Location

Ronchamp, France

Date

1955

Building Type

church

Construction System reinforced concrete

Climate

temperate

Context

rural, mountains

Style

Expressionist Modern

Notes

Soft-form composition, deep windows with colored glass

(wall thickness 4' to 12')

Fig. 2.8 Isometric view

Surrealism is a key to other late works of Le Corbusier to other late works of Le

Corbusier, most notably the church at Ronchamp, France. The church is simple: an
oblong nave, two side entrances, an axial main altar, and three chapels beneath towers

as is its structure, with rough masonry walls faced with whitewashed gunite and a roof
of contrasting beton brut. Formally and symbolically , however, this small building,
which is sited atop a hillside with access from the south, is immensely powerful and
complex. Although its interior is roughly four square space along a longitudinal east
west axis, the exterior walls and roof are organized diagonally to sharply contrasting
group formations. Toward the front the concave south and east walls are pulled into
one unit jutting out beneath an enormous overhanging roof, whereas to the rear, the
north and west walls are shaped into an undulating, convex continuum with no visible
roof, flowing up into an undulating, convex continuum with no visible roof , flowing
up into towers, interrupted only by an entrance. Serving as a visual anchor, and as a
pivot to both groups, is the bell tower its convex, closed side turned toward the
concave front, and vice versa. Some of these external works may be considered
functional: the overhanging roof shelter the principal entrance and the external apse,
formed by the east wall, which has an altar and pulpit for outdoor services.

In the huge roof slabs and in the rugged cleft walls of the main faade are seen the
dolmens of carnac, an echo of Ronchamps pre Christian shrine. The rear of the
building again fuses the mythic and the Christian. In its undulating forms can be seen
a giant reclining female, surely the mythical Mother Earth. The twin towers at the
entrance are the traditional tin towers of the church faades. The ceiling drops
ominously towards the center from a maximum height of about 32 feet over the altar
to about 16 feet.

Fig. 2.9 Front view

10

Fig. 2.10 Rear view

2.4 PALACE OF ASSEMBLY
Location :Chandigarh, Ind ia
Building type : Parliament house
Construction system : cast in place concrete
Climate :hot
Context :urban, planned city
Style :modern
The assembly hall has a square plan. The assembly chamber in the form of a
hyperbolic shell, is surrounded by a ceremonial space. This circulation space which is
a triple height columned hall is dimly it. It is meant for formal meetings and
discussions.A bank of offices protected by a brise-soleil is spread on the three sides.
The great portico on thee fourth side consists of eight thin piers. These piers support a
huge upward swooping curvilinear canopy, falling into reflecting pools. It functions
both as an umbrella and a gutter for rain water.

The ceremonial pivoted door is placed in an off-centered bay of the portico. It

provides access to the columnar lobby from the outside. The door was intended to
provide a ceremonial entry for the governor when he opens the assembly session. A
rich range of images that convey multiple meanings are painted on the interior and
exterior surface of the door. Le Corbusier was interested in painting of himself similar
to the one he had already painted for the Ronchamp Chapel. The 110 square metre
door consists of 110 panels, 55 on each side. These were arranged in five rows

11

horizontally and 11 vertically. The bright colours of the clothing of Punjabi women is
considered as a possible source for the painting of the door. The symbols painted by
him are Ox which correspond to his sketches from Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.

Fig. 2.11 Ground floor Plan

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Entrance
Office
Assembly hall
Assembly chamber
Pool

12

Fig. 2.12 Section

2.13 General view

2.14 Entrance canopy

13

On the top of the roof are three interrelated parts: a hyperbolic shell, a pyramid and a
lift tower. The hyperbolic shell is designed to provide light for the assembly hall
where the pyramid light the council chamber.

2.15 Assembly door

In the assembly hall he used tapestries to solve the problems of acoustics. A reddishblue, 25m long tapestries is hung behind the columns and the ramp. It extends from
the ceiling to the floor and is covered with symbolic designs.

2.16 Assembly chamber

14

2.17 Dramatic interior

2.5 HIGH COURT

Location :Chandigarh, India
Construction system : cast in place concrete
Climate :hot
Context :urban,planned city
Style :modern

The high court was the first structure to be built in the capitol complex. Its structure
symbolizes three ideas : the majesty of law, the protection of law and the power and
fear of law, the building has a L shaped plan and houses eight double height
courtrooms and a triple height high court on the ground floor with offices above each
court. The courtrooms are identically expressed on the main faade and are separated
from the high court by a great entrance portico. Each courtroom is individually
accessible to the public from the outside.On the south eastern side is a public entrance
and a car park at a lower level. The continuity of the surface of the esplanade with the
entrance portico on north-western side sustains the unity of external and internal
spaces. An emphatic colour scheme has been evolved to enhance the visual delight of
the building across the plaza. The three pylons of portico rising 18.3 metres from the

15

ground express the majesty of law. They are cement rendered and painted green,
yellow, and a pinkish red respectively. The flanking walls are painted black.

2.18 General view

A double roof has been provided to protect the entire structure from the sun. The
upper projecting roof in the form of a row of arches gives a feeling of protective
aspect of law. This parasol roof, which slopes towards the center, provides a trough
from which the rain water gushes out through heavy spouts at either ends. The space
between the upper and lower roofs is left open to allow free movement of air, cooling
the interiors considerably.

2.18 Front view

The building is constructed in exposed reinforced concrete which is treated in a

variety of manners. The floor of the entrance area is finished with stone which is set
in rows of varying widths. To ensure satisfactory acoustics, Corbusier used tapestries
which he realized could also serve as a convenient element in the composition of
modern architecture and not as a mere decoration.

16

2.19 Plan

2.20 Extension plan

2.21 Section

Almost immediately after the completion of the building, it was seen that it could not
meet the requirements of the expanding court .Le Corbusier designed extensions, to
accommodate the increasing requirements for additional space. He proposed a doublestoreyed brick annexe on the rear side so that its form may not spoil the composition
of the capital complex.
The Chandigarh high court is a work of art taken in its entirety with balance,
symmetry and daring simplicity as its outstanding features.

17

3. LOUIS KAHN
Louis Kahns style was different in a way that made him well known as a counter
modernist. His architecture was based on the idea of function. Instead of analyzing
the functionality into its minute psychophysical components, he philosophically
explored the essence of the buildings intended use, which then served as a
springboard for his creation of an answering architectural form. He was consumed by
an almost mystical vision of architecture. Buildings for him were not inert
configurations of form and space but living organic entities, created by an architect
for human use. Thus Kahn asked himself not how to accommodate economically or
beautifully this or that space requirement but what does the building want to be?
The vitality and the animism of his designs however did not depend on the free-form,
biomorphic shapes of expressionism but on something intrinsically tectonic. Thus he
was popularly known as an architects architect. His principles can be further
explained though his works.

3.1 RICHARDSS MEDICAL CENTRE

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Date: 1957 to 1961
Building type: laboratories, offices
Construction system: precast concrete with trusses, brick
Climate: temperate
Context: urban campus
Style: modern

Description
This is one of his first works. He has put to use his principle ideas of served and
servant spaces, they are not as in modernism generally combined into one package
or as in brutalism left as exposed ductwork. In order to realize its potential organic
wholeness, each servedspacehas its independent structural frame with a complete
set of supports. Another idea of his, i.e. light brings architecture to life has also been
used in this project. Each servedspacehas been provided with its own source of

18

natural illumination. Openings in the walls are not for views or for continuity with
nature but to admit light to the interior space: walls, by deflecting it, shelter the space
from an illumination too powerful and intense. The resulting pavilion sys tems of
discrete, served/serving architectural units with enveloping light screens tend to fuse
into multilayered architectural gatherings.

Fig. 3.1 Front view of Richards medical center

19

Fig. 3.2 Served Spaces (enlarged view)

Fig. 3.3 Typ ical Served Spaces

20

3.2 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY HALL

Location: Dacca, Bangladesh
Date: 1962 to 1974
Building type: government center
Construction system: concrete, marble
Climate: desert
Style: modern
Description
This is one of his mature works. In this the potential of the pavilion system was fully
realized. It was designed in 1962 as a dense, seemingly impenetrable, concentric
agglomeration of walled spaces clustered around the central assembly chamber: press
offices, secondary meeting halls and a mosque. The minor units are themselves
multilayered admitting light through geometric cutouts in their solid, forbidding walls,
which give it an austere, overpowering image of a fortress enclosed by rings of walls
and towers. These qualities depend on Kahns near-exclusive use of masonry and
especially of reinforced concrete in his mature work. These he deployed not in thin
high modernist skins, but in solid, muscular, structural armatures and shells, which he
derived from the rugged primitivism of the late style of Le Corbusier. Another idea of
le Corbusier, which he developed, to the maximum in this work is the brise-soleilof
freestanding perimetric screens.
The vast mural layers at Dacca, which Kahn also called as an offering to the sun,
cut by huge mysterious circles, squares and triangles, are thus meant not only to
control the blinding sun of the Indian subcontinent but to give the building the aura of
ancientness by evoking the image of ancient ruins, crumbling roman walls punched
with empty openings, and useless structures which nothing lives behind.

21

Fig. 3.4 Aerial view of Assembly Hall

Fig. 3.5 Plan

22

Plan (centralized structures with concentrically layered spaces aligned on rotating

axes)
1) Entrance hall
2) Offices
3) Cafeteria and recreation
4) Ministers lounge
5) Prayer hall
6) Court of ablutions
7) National assembly

As shown in plan above it has three zones the citadel of the assembly, the
institutional estate and the residential estate. In the citadel of the assembly zone, the
assembly building is flanked by hostels for members of parliament. These hostels are
2 chains of strictly designed buildings lining the edges of the triangular artificial lake.
The external of assembly building is in concrete in which strips of marble have been
inserted while the other buildings are in exposed brick.

This visionary iconographic leap was to prove Kahns most significant influence in
contemporary architecture.

3.3 KIM BELL ART MUSEUM

Location: Fortworth, Texas
Date: 1967 to 1972
Building type: art museum
Construction system: reinforced system
Climate: temperate
Context: urban park setting
Style: modern

23

Description
This is one of his mature works in which he has achieved the same power and ancient
aura in a less flamboyant manner. This was designed keeping in mind the additive
assemblages of modular units.
The principal floor of the museum, set over a basement storey that evens out the
sloping site, consists mainly of a repeated structural unit, an enormous barrel- vaulted
bay 20 by 100 feet, laid out in six parallel rows, each row three units deep end to end.
The idea for such a barrel vault is not new. It was adopted from le Corbusier late
works, but on the scale and in the spirit that Kahn used this it can be traced back to
second-century B.C.Roman warehouses. In the museum, the 100 foot long vaulting
unit is supported only at the corners by narrow piers eliminating the support walls and
thereby freeing the interior space. This span is possible because Kahns vault is a
single unit of reinforced concrete, forming in effect, a concrete beam of semi-circular
profile.

Fig. 3.6 cross-sectional view

In order to bring light into the museum, Kahn transformed the structure even further.
He slit open the apex of each vault from end to end, leaving only minimal structural
bridges every 10 feet. To avoid the glaring light that the 2.5 foot wide slot would have
created, Kahn invented a high technology, interior version of his usual external
masonry sun screens-a natural lighting fixture. Hanging below the vault are curved
aluminum panels perforated with tiny holes that allow a small portion of light to
penetrate directly, while the rest is reflected from the highly polished upper aluminum
surface onto the vault and hence into the interior. The resulting mixture of silver
light, as Kahn called it, combined with a gentle green light diffused through the

24

interior from strategically placed sculpture garden courts, and creates a luminous
atmosphere tinged with the coloration of both sky and earth. Kahns treatment of the
ceiling however was aimed at more than just the light it shed on the space below, for
the appearance of the vault itself was a crucial consideration. As a type, the barrel
vault offered roman grandeur and nobility but it also carried drawbacks-a heavy,
gloomy appearance appropriate in a warehouse. Kahn found a way to preserve the
former characteristics while avoiding the latter. Thus Kahn created for his museum a
serene, yet dynamic, atmosphere combining roman gravitas and gothic buoyancy.

Fig. 3.7 Roof Details

Fig. 3.8 Plan

25

Plan, Kim bell art museum, gallery level plan

1) Porch
2) Entrance porch
3) Entrance hall Gallery
4) Book sale
5) Auditorium
6) Open court
7) Kitchen
8) library

26

4. EERO SAARINEN
Eero Saarinen the son of, the celebrated Finnish architect and the first president of the
Cranbook Academy of art, Eliel Saarinen,was born in Helsinki. He emigrated with his
family to US in 1923 initially studied sculpture at the Academy De La Grande
Chaumiere in Paris (1929/30) and later at Yale university in New Haven. His works
described below shall throw light on his works.
4.1 DULLES AIRPORT
Location :Chantilly, Virginia
Date :1958 to 1962
Building Type : airline terminal
Construction System :concrete
Climate : temperate
Context : suburban
Style :Modern

4.1.1 The Project

In normal smooth flight, a jet airplane hangs from its wings, its passengers cradled
like sleeping babies.

On the ground, the same plane jiggles and bounces along on

ungainly wheeled legs, its wings flapping. It has left is element but the passengers
have regained theirs. How is the transition to be made?

This is the problem of the airport terminal.

Its reexamination was the starting point of the studies for a new international airport
for Washington, D.C. The client, the Federal Aviation Agency, was freer than any
commercial airline to encourage a totally new look at the problem. Amman and
Whitney as p rime contractor, Eero Saarinen and Associates as the architects,
together with the consulting specialists in airport layout, made a detailed analysis of
the movement of passengers and baggage from car or bus to ticket office and
weighing stations, to waiting rooms and baggage rooms, and to the seats and baggage holds

27

within the planes fuselage. They found that as planes have grown larger and the
number of flights more numerous, walking distances have increased beyond the level
of tolerance and that any new finger plans would only lengthen them.

The solution proposed is based on the use of a mobile lounge, a waiting room on
wheels, which can carry passengers in comfort from the terminal building right into
the plane, which remains far out on the field (Fig. 9.1). Even though the initial and
maintenance costs are high, so are the expenses of taming and towing giant planes.

Like any innovation, this solution has its proponents and detractors. Only as the
traffic at Dulles Airport increases will it be possible to decide whether the device of
the mobile lounge really works as effectively and as economically as its inventors
hoped. The proof that it does will come when some new, purely commercial airport is
built on the same principle.

In looking at Dulles as it is, we can enjoy it architecturally without being required to

pass judgment on this technical device. We can accept it as a reasonable solution to
the problem. The plan of the terminal building follows directly and simply from it
and from the programmatic requirement of providing for 100 percent future
expansion.

The floor plan is conceived in terms of two main axes: one transverse for the
movement of passengers, the other lengthwise for the growth of the building (Figs.
4.1 to 4.3). People arriving to take a plane draw up by bus, taxi, or car parallel to the
north wall, enter the door corresponding to their airline, come directly into the vast
hall, cross to their ticket office, leave their luggage, and continue over into their
mobile lounge, which is one of a pair assigned to this section of the building. When
the lounge (which has seats for 72, standing room for 26 more) has its planeload, and
its plane has landed, it heads out across the vast field. The other lounge, which had
left earlier, empty, passes it on the way back to the terminal building with a load of
disembarking passengers. they get out of the lounge at the gate, move across the hall
and downward to the lower level, pick up their baggage, and exit to the lower road,

28

where they can take a bus or taxi or walk to their car in the parking lot. Then into
Washington, 27 miles, but only 35 minutes away along the parkways.

Fig. 4.1 Section

Circulation the movement of people, planes, cars, baggage, etc is the heart of this
design problem, and it has been solved with sharp clarity. There can be no doubt
about where to go: walk straight ahead and you get where you are supposed to be.
And if you have time to kill, you will never become lost wandering about in the great
hall or along the observation deck.

The circulation pattern established, what dimensions do the spaces need? One binary
unit of mobile lounges can fit nicely into 40 ft, so this becomes the bay module in the
east-west, or lengthwise, direction. The width of the hall must provide room
(1) For the passengers to enter and to stand in front of the ticket office,
(2) for the ticket kiosk itself,
(3) for the stairs to the lower level, and
(4) for crowding around the mobile-lounge gate about 150 ft in all.

So much for functional needs. What about the overall shape? These plan dimensions
could be covered with a flat ceiling only 7 ft about the floor, like the cellars of office
buildings to which the railroads are being relegated. But human being require more

29

than minimum spaces, and it is the concern of architecture as an art to decide the
nature of this more.
Saarinen envisioned it as a single room, roofed by a giant hammock, slung from two
edge beams. Cantilevered up from the floor to support them are the hook-headed
columns, leaning outward against the pull of the hanging roof.

The tilted sweep of the roof reaches up on the entrance side to welcome passengers
and curves gently down across the hall and up again on the other side to suggest their
outward movement. The cross section recalls that of a venturi tube, whose effect on
the flow of fluids is not totally unrelated.

30

7
6

12 3 4 5 6 7 8 -

Fig. 4.2 Plan of lower floor

31

runway
departure and arrival entrance
tower
great hall
mobile lounge
drive way
Ticket kiosk
shops

Fig. 4.3 Plan of upper floor

From the exterior the long prismatic form is set off and enriched by contrast with the
happily top-heavy control tower, to which it is linked by a rectangular block. The
silhouette is dramatic and effective, standing on a miles-wide plain. As Saarinen

32

wrote, A strong form that seemed both to rise from the plain and hover over it would
look best. The terminal should also have a monumental scale in this landscape and
in the vastness of this huge airfield. It does.

Fig. 4.4 View from the north

Fig. 4.5 The great hall, looking west along the south hall

From inside, the monumental scale is still apparent. The elegant downward sweep of
the ceiling establishes a very different sense of space from that of a classical barrelvaulted room like the Baths of Caracalla, Grand Central Station in New York, or
Nervis Turin Exhibition Hall. It is fresh, clean, and bathed in light, fulfilling the

33

promises made, but never kept, by some of the great glass and iron halls of the
nineteenth century.

However, this interior space has its shortcomings.

repetitious.

It is perhaps too simple, too

Except for the awkward, necessary roof drain (one of the strongest

arguments against most hanging roofs), there are only the rectangular kiosks to
furnish and subdivide its tremendous volume 640 ft long, 160 ft wide, and an
average of 33ft high. The eye is led by the hammock shape to glass walls and the
views beyond, only to find that they are very dull, especially since the airplanes are so
far away that one c an hardly see them. What one does see are buses, taxis, mobile
lounges, maintenance trucks, etc. and, fortunately, the sky.

The kiosks prevent a clear view of the entire room. It is a frustration rather than a
diversion when one is forced to walk back and forth between them trying to see the
whole interior. Maybe there should be walkways and seats on the roofs of the kiosks
so that one could move up into this great space. The success of the interior of
Saarinens TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York is the passengers
movement in three dimensions, permitting an almost birdlike experience of the space.
Perhaps Saarinen wanted to suggest that the Dulles hall is not a waiting space in
which the traveler should spend any time but rather an enormous vestibule to the
nations capital. Compared to the awkwardness of TWA, the exterior of Dulles is a
stronger and much more graceful form. On the whole, however, the differences
between the two buildings reflect the fact that, try a s we will, commercial life is more
characteristic of our epoch than ceremonial government.

There si a greater shortcoming to the Dulles terminal, however, which is not the
architects fault and which time will cure emptiness. As yet the terminal is not used
for many flights. The few planes are far away; there are only a handful of people in
this great hall. With no activity to bring it to life it is like some monument of a
departed civilization or, more hopefully, a full- size model of an architectural project.
Until the traffic increases, the architecture will always suffer. Large areas and large
spaces need many people and much activity.

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4.2 GATEWAY ARCH

Location: St.Louis, Missouri
Date: 1961 to 1966
Building type: memorial arch, monument, observation tower
Construction system: stainless steel
Climate: temperate
Context: riverside urban park
Style: structural expressionist modern

Description
It is a 630 foot high graceful sweeping tapered curve of stainless steel with its bases
also 630 feet apart, the StLouis gateway arch is the tallest memorial in the U.S. It can
withstand a load of 150mph and it will tilt only 18 inches at the top. The structure of
the arch is supported by reinforced beams that are placed sixty feet into the ground
and thirty feet into the bedrock the site was prepared for construction by a digging of
300,000 cubic feet, headed by MacDonald Construction Company.

Fig. 4.6 front view of gateway arch

35

Fig. 4.7 Base of arch

36

5. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

5.1 INTRODUCTION

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He
spent a few semesters in the Engineering School at the University of Wisconsin
before leaving for Chicago in 1887. At the age of twenty, he was hired as an
apprentice in the office of J. Lyman Silsbee who designed All Souls' Unitarian Church
where Wright's uncle was minister. The young architect's first work was nominally a
Silsbee commission --the Hillside Home School built for his aunts in 1888 near
Spring Green, Wisconsin.
While construction was underway on the Hillside Home School, Wright went to work
for the Chicago firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, working as a draftsman
on the Auditorium Building, which, at the time of completion in 1890, was the largest
building in Chicago. He remained with that firm until 1893, during which time he
absorbed Sullivan's influence and designed several houses, including one for himself
in Oak Park, Illinois that was constructed with Sullivan's financial assistance.
"Moonlighting" on his own commissions led to a break with Sullivan in 1893, and
Wright set up a separate practice. His first commissions were primarily for the design
of private homes in the more affluent suburbs of Chicago and include the W. H.
Winslow house of 1893-94 in River Forest, Illinois --considered by Wright to be his
"first." Unfortunately, many of the buildings he designed around the turn of the
century have not survived through the turn of the century, Wright's distinctively
personal style was evolving, and his work in these years foreshadowed his so-called
"prairie style," a term deriving from the publication in 1901 of "A Home in a Prairie
Town" which he designed for the Ladies' Home Journal.
Prairie houses were characterized by low, horizontal lines that were meant to blend
with the flat landscape around them. Typically, these structures were built around a
central chimney, consisted of broad open spaces instead of strictly defined rooms, and
deliberately blurred the distinction between interior space and the surrounding terrain.
Wright acclaimed "the new reality that is space instead of matter" and, about

37

architectural interiors, said that the "reality of a building is not the container but the
space within."
Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 29, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. It is said that the
project on his drawing board was a simple and affordable prefabricated concreteblock house.
5.2 RESIDENTIAL DESIGNS
5.2.1 William H Winslow House

William Winslow, publisher of House Beautiful, was Wright's first client when he
opened his own architectural practice in Chicago in 1893. The William Winslow
house has been called an essential step in the development of the Prairie House
because it was here that Wright first developed the exterior forms and elevational
concepts that would allow him to begin to give shape on the outside to the dynamic
qualities of interior space.

Fig.5.1 Front View

The front of the house is completely symmetrical and formal in appearance. The
masonry elements bear a foliage ornament in the style of Louis Sullivan. Roman brick
is the basic material, while stone and plaster are also employed. The half-story space
between the cornice topping the brick mass and the widely overhanging roof is filled
with heavily textured dark brown terracotta panels. The windows take up the entire

38

space of the terracotta pane ling, extending from the cornice to the moulding under the
roof. The result is that the roof seems to float above the brick mass, as though it were
physically separated from the rest of the structure.

Fig. 5.2 Front portion of house

Fig. 5.3 Main Floor Plan

Fig. 5.3 shows the floor plan of the first (main) floor. Sleeping quarters are on the
upper floor.

39

5.2.2 Ward W. Willits House

The Willits House is the first house in true Prairie style and marks the full
development of Wright's wood frame and stucco system of construction. Wright used
a cruciform plan with the interior space flowing around a central chimney core and
extending outward onto covered verandas and open terraces.

Fig.5.4 Front view

Fig. 5.5 Ground Floor Plan

Fig. 5.5 shows the ground floor plan of the Willits House. Entrance-stair hall, living
room, dining room and kitchen rotate around the central fireplace.

40

5.2.3 Frederick C. Robie House

The Robie House, as Wright's best expression of the Prairie masonry structure, is a
national landmark. Called the "house of the century" by House and Home magazine in
1958, it is now owned by the University of Chicago

Fig. 5.6 Side View of Robie House

The steel beams that support the front roof cantilever over the terrace are revealed in
the folded and dropped ceiling along the edges of the main rooms inside. There are no
real walls in the living room, only plaster- faced posts between the windows and
doors, which are continuous around the entire room. The wood-trim boards bend to
follow the ceiling line as they cross the room are spaced to align with the doorposts.

Fig. 5.7 Interior View of Robie House

41

Fig. 5.8 Second Floor Plan

Fig 5.8 shows the second (main) floor plan. The ground floor contains a billiards
room below the living room and children's area below the dining room. The third
floor is the sleeping quarters. All three stories take no more height than most twostory houses of the same era.
5.2.4 FallingWater
Fallingwater has been described as "the best-known private home for someone not of
royal blood in the history of the world." Perched over a waterfall on Bear Run in the
western Pennsylvania highlands, the rural retreat constructed for Edgar J. Kaufmann,
Sr., has also been called the fullest realization of Wright's lifelong ideal of a living
place completely at one with nature. Reinforced-concrete cantilever slabs project from
the rocks to carry the house over the stream. From the living room, a suspended
stairway leads directly down to the stream. On the third level immediately above,
terraces open from sleeping quarters, emphasizing the horizontal nature of the
structural forms. Wright himself described Fallingwater as "a great blessing -one of
the great blessings to be experienced here on earth."

42

Fig. 5.9 View of Fallingwater

Fallingwater is constructed on three levels primarily of reinforced concrete, native
sandstone and glass. Soaring cantilevered balconies are anchored in solid rock. Walls
of glass form the south exposure, and a vertical shaft of mitered glass merges with
stone and steel to overlook the stream.

Fig. 5.10 South Exposure of the house

43

Fig. 5.11 Main Level Floor Plan

Figure 5.11 shows floor plan of main level. Most of the house's floor space is devoted
to the stone-paved living area with its various activity spaces. A high proportion of
the living space is outdoors in the form of terraces, loggia and plunge pool below the
living room.

5.3 RELIGIOUS STRUCTURES

5.3.1 Unity Church

Unity Church was the first public building of any type in America to be built entirely
of exposed concrete. Its use was dictated in part by the need to keep construction costs
low, but Wright's principle of integrity called for the building to be "thoroughbred,
meaning built in character out of the same material," and therefore reinforced concrete
was the only material possible.

44

Fig. 5.12 Side View of Church

Most critics consider this sanctuary one of Wright's highest achievements. The ceiling
is opened above the central cube into a grid of beams, into which are set 25 stainedglass skylights. Clerestories run full width across the tops of each balcony just under
the roof. Light enters the sanctuary only from above and is filtered by the colors and
patterns of the leaded windows and skylights. As Wright said, the space is flooded
"with light from above to get a sense of a happy cloudless day into the room... the
light would, rain or shine, have the warmth of sunlight."

Fig. 5.13 Interior of Church

45

Fig. 5.14 Composite floor plan of three levels

Fig 5.14 shows the composite floor plan of three levels. The architect's imaginative
use of the limited space on the building site provided ample accommodations for the
400-member congregation in both the sanctuary (Unity Temple) and the parish hall
(Unity House). The plan is closely related to the centralized churches of the
Renaissance, being similarly based on pure geometries of the square and cube.

Fig. 5.15 Perspective Drawing

46

5.4 HIGH RISE BUILDINGS

5.4.1 Harold C. Price Company Tower

The H. C. Price Company Tower rises

like a tall tree 221 feet above the
eastern

Oklahoma

nineteen-story

prairie.

building

The

with

spire

tower is constructed of reinforced

concrete
copper

with

cantilevered

louvers

and

floors,

copper-faced

parapets, and gold-tinted glass exterior.

The client had asked Wright to design
a two-story office structure for his
company, along with parking space for
about ten to fifteen vehicles. Wright
proposed instead a tower on the prairie
as called for in his Broadacre City
design,

"tower

alone

on

the

horizontal plain rather than in the

vertical urban context with other
towers. " The

Price

Tower

has
Fig. 5.16 Front View of Tower

apartments in one quadrant of each floor, for a total of eight double-height

apartments. Single-height offices occupy the other three quadrants in the pinwheel
plan. Wright indicates the functions housed behind each elevation by his use of
copper louvers or sunshades attached to the windows. In the three quadrants of
offices, three angled horizontal louvers shade the glass and wrap around each corner;
in the apartment quadrant, angled vertical louvers run uninterrupted the full height of
the building with small balconies off the master bedrooms projecting through them at
one edge.

47

5.17 Mural , H. C. Price Company Tower

Left:

Section of the H. C. Price

Company Tower

Right: Plans,

H.

C.

Company Tower

Fig. 5.18

48

Price

5.5 CIVIC AND CULTURAL CENTERS

5.5.1 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
In 1943, Wright was commissioned to design a museum to house the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Collection of Non-Objective Painting. Construction of the building
began in 1956 and was incomplete at the time of Wright's death in 1959. The many
delays in implementing the plan included the building moratorium imposed by World
War II, the difficulty of finding a suitable site in Manhattan, and problems in
obtaining construction permits from New York City officials. The spiral form that
characterized the design from the earliest stage went through several versions; with
tiers of the same size, or growing progressively smaller toward the top, or expand ing
in size as the building rose.

Fig. 5.19 Outside View of Museum

The choice of the expanding spiral made the best use of the available site and
combined structural and spatial principles toward which Wright had worked
throughout his career. The primary construction material is concrete, both sprayed and
poured into forms. Inside the building, a shallow spiraling ramp follows the
curvilinear form of the exterior and provides display space for the artworks. Wright

49

said, the Guggenheim Museum is "one great space on a single continuous floor. The
eye encounters no abrupt change, but is gently led and treated as if at the edge of a
shore watching an unbreaking wave ... one floor flowing into another instead of the
usual superimposition of stratified layers. The whole is cast in concrete, more an
eggshell in form than a crisscross brick structure."

Fig. 5.20 Interior of Museum

Fig. 5.21 Plan of Ground Floor Level

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5.6 COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

5.6.1 V.C. Morris Gift Shop
The V.C. Morris Gift Shop in San Francisco, California conceals a circular inner
volume behind a simple windowless wall of fine brickwork. The vertical grille on the
left of the entrance arch is created by removing every other brick and is backed by
recessed lights.

Fig. 5.22 Front View of Gift Shop

In the interior, Wright placed a circular mezzanine reached by ascending a spiral
ramp. Both are made of white reinforced concrete. The built- in wood and glass
furnishings are also composed of circle segme nts. A grid of interlocked translucent
globes suspended above the circular space provides light. Circular openings for
display of illuminated objects pierce the curved wall of the ramp.

Fig. 5.23 Interior of Gift Shop

51

Although the Morris Gift Shop was constructed before the Guggenheim Museum, the
design for the museum pre-dates that of the shop. However, construction of this
building allowed Wright his first opportunity to build an internal spiral ramp.

Fig. 5.24 Plan of Gift Shop

Fig. 5.25 Faade of building

As shown in figure 5.25 the faade of the building does not have the traditional storefront windows, instead passers-by may be enticed into the arch-tunnel of glass.

52

6.0CONCLUSION
Le Corbusier designed an enormous range typologically as well as geographically,
from small rustic house outside Paris to a visionary new governmental city at
Chandigarh in India, as well as museums, college buildings exhibition halls and other
works in Europe, Japan and America.

Louis Kahn, was one of the eminent contributors to modern architecture .his ideas of "
served "spaces as seen in his works added a new dimension to architecture. Later in
his career, the influence of le Corbusier can be seen in the rugged primitivism of his
works. Louis Kahn also gave a lot of importance to the lighting concepts, which can
be clearly seen in his works described above. Thus, it can be concluded that Louis
Kahn was a modernist who revolutionized the design concepts.
Eero saarinen major works were the Twa airport and Dulles airport. His ideas were
more along the lines of sweeping and flowing structures.

Wright's basic philosophy of architecture was stated primarily through the house
form. Wright did not aspire simply to design a house, but to create a complete
environment, and he often dictated the details of the interior. He designed stained
glass, fabrics, furniture, carpet and the accessories of the house. The controlling factor
was seldom the wishes of the individual client, but Wright's belief that buildings
strongly influence the people who inhabit them. He believed that "the architect is a
molder of men, whether or not he consciously assumes the responsibility. He made
contribution in the field of low cost housing. Wrights work provides evidence of the
continuing vitality of his powers of invention.

53

REFERENCES

1) Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings, 1990, Harry N

Abram, Inc., Publishers, New York
In Association With The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation And The Pheonix
Art Museum.
2) Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright 1991,
Benedikt Taschen Publishers.
3) Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, Architecture- from pre history to
post modernism Prentice- hall inc and Harry N Abrams
4) Bahga, Sarbit and Surinder, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanerette The foot
print on Sands of Indian architecture, 2000, New Delhi, Galgottia
5) H. Seymour, Howard, Structure an Architect Approach" McGraw Hill, Book
Company, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco,
6) www.Delmars.com/wright/flwright.htm-14k
7) www.gatewayarch.com
8) www.Great bldgs .com/architects/Le-Corbusier.html
9) www.scandinaviandesign.com
10) www.bluffton.edu

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